The Mozambican police arrested in Maputo last week two Liberian citizens, a man and woman, who were swindling people by selling them magical boxes that could allegedly transform worthless scraps of paper into US dollar bills, reports Monday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias".
This is an old con-trick, which has surfaced repeatedly in Maputo, and it speaks volumes for the greed, gullibility and sheer ignorance of the victims that they still fall for it.
The swindlers usually sell their victims piles of blackened pieces of paper, cut to the size of 100 dollar bills. This will be transformed into authentic US currency, if placed inside the box (in some variants of the scheme, the paper must be "washed" with special chemicals). With some sleight of hand the fraudsters manage to produce what look like 100 dollar bills from the box, and their victims imagine they have stumbled upon a way, literally, to make millions of dollars.
The swindlers sell the boxes and blackened paper for large amounts of money - and then vanish.
The police learnt that the conmen have collected at least 20,000 US dollars and over 400 million meticais (about 16,500 US dollars) - and that is only from those who filed complaints to the police. This money has not yet been recovered.
The woman is believed to be the wife of another Liberian swindler who has been under police custody at the Maputo maximum security jail for the last three months, accused of a similar crime.
Maputo police command spokesperson Abilio Quive said "These foreigners came to the country under the pretext of opening service companies and were carrying suitcases containing thousands of pieces of paper cut to the size of 100 dollar bills. They said these papers would change into true money with the use of a special product to be found at the United States Embassy". Quive said the police are working to neutralise the entire network of swindlers, and urged society to cooperate with the police by denouncing all suspicious cases.
Also last week, the police arrested a Mozambican in the possession of 13,700 rands in counterfeit banknotes. He was detained when he was trying to change the phoney rands into meticais at a Maputo bus terminal.
Another 53 people, including nine foreigners, five of whom entered the country illegally, were also arrested last week, accused of serious crimes.
Of this figure, 27 are accused of burglary and armed robbery. The police recovered six firearms (five pistols and one AK-47 assault rifle), six stolen vehicles and a number of mobile phones.
Fonte: AIM
